These were presented at the organization’s convention in San Antonio earlier this month.

The top awards in the previously-published or canned-entry contests were a 1st place to Corey Wood for his poem Grand Prize, 1st place to Richard Reese for his illustration Pool Ladies, 1st place to Alayne Armstrong for her news photo of Instructor Michael Fields, 1st place to newspaper staff for an ad designed for the farmers market and an honorable mention for Overall Excellence of El Paisano, the MC student newspaper. The newspaper is now titled Midland College Press.

Other winners competed through material published in the Tableau, MC’s literary magazine, and the Chaparral, MC’s news-feature magazine.

The Overall Excellence award represents the quality of three complete issues submitted during the 2013 calendar year.

“We take home certificates each year, but I especially savored this year’s wins because of the variety of competition of our students in the canned contests,” Templeton said. “It continues to speak well for Midland College’s student publications.”

Six awards were taken by former student Troy Pardue, topping his record five awards from Texas Community College Journalism Association last fall.

Pardue earned 3rd place for his newspaper twerking cartoon that raised controversy last fall; 3rd place for a general newspaper column about thin-skinned reactions to today’s raunchy culture; 3rd place for the newspaper news story about the state eliminating MC’s nursing program; honorable mention for a sports newspaper column about a former MC coach with strange behavior; honorable mention in the general magazine category of picture story about the Texas music scene; and 3rd place for his literary magazine feature photo of dog tags.

The other literary magazine awards are: 2nd place for the essay titled My Scariest Moment by Ashley Pillado; 3rd place for the feature story titled Hollywood Story by Blake Rackley; honorable mention for the poem titled Drought by Kathryn Hedin; and honorable mention for the short story titled The Sound of Lungs Expanding by Corey Wood.

They competed in different categories among more than 30 live, on-site contests held simultaneously at the El Tropicano Hotel and in the Riverwalk area of San Antonio.

Participants also attended a plethora of professional breakout sessions and the TIPA Hall of Fame luncheon that was keynoted by Dallas Morning News columnist Steve Blow, one of three inductees into the hall of fame.
Coincidentally, Templeton’s grandfather David Henry Templeton was one of the nine founding student members of TIPA while he was studying at Trinity University.